Lights and tree
After our long afternoon project of getting our lights up on the house in early December it took a few days to get the enthusiasm together to add more lights. Chelsea was the project leader on the lights, and by the time we were finished we had lights in every room in the house, and had added net lights in front and rope lights around the pool.
Our next step was getting a tree. Before Alex headed off to New York with his girlfriend Amanda, to meet Amanda’s mom, he’d left us a small bit of cash. We decided to get a tree of some kind. Having seen a tree lot up in West Palm Beach advertising “a dozen free donuts at Dunkin’ donuts with the purchase of a $25 six-foot tree”, we thought $25 was an average price.
When time came to get the tree, we looked at the Home Depot lot, saw the minimum price was $35, so we turned and left. We headed down to a private lot near our local Publix. The trees were gorgeous, the lot was empty except for the family that runs it –we had our run of the place. I looked at the first tree on the edge of the lot and had a small heart attack – it was $47! Clearly out of our price range. I went deeper into the trees, but the next one was $75!
We turned to leave – we didn’t want to waste their time since the trees were so far out of our price range. The owner of the lot, a pleasant-looking older guy, spotted us leaving and asked what the problem was. I admitted that the trees were out of our price range, that we’d been thinking in the $25-30 range. After taking a minute to look at us thoughtfully, he said, “Tell you what. Let’s make a deal. Find what you want and let me know.”
I spotted a perfect tree a moment later; Chelsea and I both agreed it was wonderful. The owner handed his son a tag and said in a low voice, “Tell them to bring this up to the cashier.” It was priced at $29, and the tree itself had a tag of $57. We got out our $30, but with tax it was more than we had. Rather than let the missing thirty cents go, he rewrote the tag and handed it to us. We’d been given a $57 tree for $19.
What a wonderful early Christmas present! We wished him and his family a heartfelt Merry Christmas and drove home in a daze with our new tree…
The tree turned out to be one of our all time favorites. It had a beautiful shape, lasted forever, and looked wonderful with all our ornaments (yes, we dug through our packed boxes and opened up our Christmas boxes).
Christmas Eve move job
Christmas Eve was one of the most unusual we’ve ever had. About two in the afternoon I was wrapping up our few Christmas presents in the bedroom while Chelsea worked with the AT&T guy to get our new DSL set up. A call came in on Chelsea’s phone – through a funny chain of circumstances we’d just been asked to help with a move.
We had our neighbor’s van for the holidays while we was in North Carolina – he’s a professional mover – so we were set with the dolly and hand truck and blankets. We arranged a time with a neighbor (Rick) who was spearheading the move. What an amazing few hours we had.
An apparently single guy in his sixties or so, our customer was seriously stressed. Though he was nice enough, it was extremely difficult working with him because he couldn’t seem to make his mind up about anything. He wasn’t ready for us, despite his extreme intensity that we HAD to be there THAT DAY.
We were moving the last of his furniture from an apartment on one side of Delray to an apartment on the other; what should have taken us only an hour or two ended up taking us over three hours, not counting the travel time from our home to and from each location. We couldn’t tell if it was stress or some kind of incipient Alzheimer’s; either way he was often almost incoherent. Following him by car was quite an experience too; we couldn’t tell if he was just riding the middle of the lane or if he was changing lanes!
In addition to all of his disorganization taking valuable extra time, our customer was Jewish and therefore didn’t celebrate Christmas; he had no personal connection to the fact that it was Christmas Eve (one of the biggest holidays of the year) and that his movers wanted to be home – though we had all stressed to him that we wanted this move to be quick. Chelsea and I didn’t care too much, other than the fact that we were getting pretty tired, but Rick had a wife and young children waiting for their dad to come home on Christmas Eve!
The good news is that it was finally over; we had a truly great time working with Rick (we’d known him some years earlier from our local neighborhood); and Chelsea and I got paid $30 an hour each for the time we spent. We were ecstatic about that part. We headed out immediately for food shopping and errands, and treated ourselves to a takeout meal for the first time in nearly a year. Finally home about eight p.m., we sat on the sofa with our takeout food on our laps, watching the tree lights, thinking about what a different kind of Christmas Eve this was…
Christmas Day
Amanda and Alex came over on Christmas day before work for a quick session of opening gifts, then Alex called from work and invited us down to the Ale House to spend the evening. He tucked us away in a booth in his section, at the back. We spent the next seven hours at the Ale House, having the best time we’ve had in ages.
Alex gradually introduced us to the rest of the staff – we already knew Amanda (a bartender) and her brother Chuck (who’s a manager there), and Dave (in the kitchen). We met Bryan, Leah (we didn’t get the spelling), and others on the wait staff, including Rusty, the manager. They’d stop by our booth on their few-minute breaks to rest and talk to us, so we had a ball with a steady stream of visitors.
Alex and Amanda made sure we were supplied with food and drink (check out the photo gallery for pictures of the food and drinks); we had great conversations; we got to watch the Charger’s football game on television; and when nothing else was going on, we laughed ourselves silly all by ourselves.
We learned a lot about waiting tables – we had lots of opportunity watching the professionals there – from the “only my hips swivel” walk as they carried heavy plates to the tables, to calling out “behind” as they approached another waiter (like cyclists on the road calling “on your left” or “rider up”), to the interactions with the customers.
Alex told us that they know what people will order simply by their age, gender, weight and ethnic origin. Alex can imitate the dialects, the accents, the personalities, and the orders each table will give. It’s as good as any stand-up comedy routine we’ve seen.
One of my favorites was when he announced to a booth next to us, “You’ll be happy to know that I’m not spending the holiday alone – my mom and my sister are at the next table over.” Of course they all turned around to look immediately.
Bryan came and sat with us several times. Spotting an immense tattoo on his arm, I asked if he’d show us. One of his arms has a full-sleeve tattoo of the Mario Brothers, and the other arm has a full-sleeve tattoo of Salvador Dali paintings. They were really, really impressive! He designed the tattoos himself… Check out our photo gallery to see them.
We finally headed for home well after midnight, sated with food and drink and deeply contented from a wonderful evening.